God Repeats Himself

 God Repeats Himself
A Devotional and Original Song by Margot Cioccio

Deuteronomy 31:8
The LORD himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged.”

I always wonder why God felt he had to repeat this message to Joshua. He becomes a great leader and must have at times been afraid and overwhelmed by the responsibility that he inherits from Moses. Lets face it those would be some big sandals for anyone to fill.
It seems by my count that the Lord tell him this at least three times. I personally find this very comforting. If God would patiently repeat himself three times for someone like Joshua he will repeat the things I need to hear too.  God is going to make sure I hear Him when he calls me or speaks to me. Joshua is said to have wholeheartedly followed the Lord. Come to think of it God repeated himself three times to another guy named Samuel who at the time was a young inexperienced boy.
We are not always the quickest to catch on to what God is saying and doing fortunately God speaks again and again in various ways until he get his message through to us. I can rest assured that He is able to make sure I do finally catch on even if it means He must repeat himself.

I have found that sometimes God will bring the same message from unrelated sources.  I was reading a fiction King Arthur book and in the book was mentioned  a woman named Julian of Norwich,  an ancoress.  I had never in my many years as a Christian heard of such a thing. That same week I was reading a book about the love of God and prayer and this same woman is mentioned in that book. At this point I am beginning to catch on that the Lord is trying to get my attention. So I did a little research on the web. Sure enough there was a fair amount of information about her life. She lived in a time where women were not allowed to express themselves in writing. Yet she had such an incredible near death mystic experience where she had amazing visions of the passion of Christ.  During her life she wrote profoundly about this experience. I am always amazed that there are some people who’s lives continue to touch lives after they have depart this life. They have the ability to touch not only their own generation but many that follow. He will never leave or forsake you  and he will get your attention when he needs to. I have included the original song I wrote as a result of being inspired by the life and writings of Julian of Norwich.

Things to Ponder:
Has God told you something more than one time in more than one way?

Prayer:
Dear Lord,  I want my life to count for something not only now but to some how touch others long after I have gone home to be with my Savior. Help me to be so full of your love that I leave a legacy that continues to lead people to you.

The Battle Is The Lords

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The Battle Is The Lords
 A Devotional by Margot Cioccio

2 Chronicles 20:17
You will not have to fight this battle. Take up your positions; stand firm and see the deliverance the LORD will give you, O Judah and Jerusalem. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged. Go out to face them tomorrow, and the LORD will be with you.’


Part of our job as a believers is to show up. To take our position by faith, to stand firm.
It is a awesome thing to see God’s deliverance in peoples lives. Often times we do have to face our fears and look them in the eyes and know that the Lord will be with us.
He does not hide us away from our enemies He sets a table for us in plain site. The enemy gets to watch the Lord lavish His blessings upon His people. 

Discouragement keeps us from showing up and from facing our fears. When we just sink back in our couch and send out invitations to our personal pity party - it is then we are loosing the battle. God may have been ready to act but we have tied his hands with our unbelief and doubt. Yep things look bad, they may look impossible, they may seem hopeless. Sure we must face our fears but we must look beyond them to the one who loves us and promises us that He will be with us. In 2 Chronicles 20:17 the people did not even have to fight. God did the fighting for them. God confounds the enemies and they fight and annihilate each other. God’s people got to watch and then clean up the spoils on the battlefield.

We too need to watch and be amazed what he does for people who will believe and trust him.
Our biggest part in the project is to allow him to do the work. To be open, honest and vulnerable before Him. I have found most everything boils down to two necessary responses from us.
The first is to repent - to take responsibility for the wrong we have done.
The second is to forgive - others and yourself as well for the wrongs done.

Things to Ponder:
Are there areas in your life where doubt and unbelief are clouding your view of God?

Is God bringing to your mind things you need to repent of or things you need to forgive?

Prayer:
Dear Lord,
Thank you for fighting my battles. I want to do my part. I have forgiven and repented of the things you have brought to mind today. I will forgive myself and stop beating myself up and allow you to heal me. Help me not to be afraid or discouraged but to trust you.

Keep Hope Alive

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Keep Hope Alive
A Devotional by Margot Cioccio

Isaiah 40:31
But those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles; 
they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.

Ok this one is from the refrigerator verse collection – here is one we all know and love.
Hope in the LORD renews strength. We can soar and run and walk on the strength that comes from hope. Hope is choosing to believe the impossible is possible. Hope delayed will arrive any time now. Hope gives us something to look forward to. Hope gives us a reason to get out of bed in the morning. I always love the part in the JR Tolkien stories where Frodo and Sam have gotten rid of the ring. There they sit on a lava flow and they know there is no rescue possible. They have accepted that the job is costing them their lives. Yet they talk about the Shire and they keep the hope of home alive.  The eagles come and swoop down and grab them in their mighty talons and carry them to safety.
This verse comes to mind when I see that part of the movie. Oh for friends like Sam who will sticks by you to the end. Friends who will recount the good, remember the noble cause. It is in those moments of faith in the face of the impossible, that God is blessed by our hope in Him.   In that moment where we are at the end of our endurance and we can bear no more - He swoops in on wings like eagles.

Who are the people who inspire hope in your life. Keep those folks near but better yet let us each endeavor to be the people who keep hope alive. Can we stir those around us to hope and belief?
I may not know how God will deliver me but I know my situation has not caught him by surprise. I must be one who keeps hope alive even when others around me can see nothing but the dark reality of the here and now. I want to see with eyes of hope and faith.


Things to Ponder:
Think of times where God has come though in the past - remembering helps us to hope in him now.

Are there areas where you feel weak and run down? Check those areas to see if you have lost hope.

Think of five people in your life that help keep hope alive - spend more time with them.

Prayer:
Dear Lord,
Help me as I put my hope in you to find renewed strength. Help me to soar on the winds of your mercy and love. Help me run and not grow weary, help me walk and not faint. Cause me to grow in hope and to inspire hope in others around me. Let me soar and run and walk in you today.

He Preserves The Faithful

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He Preserves 
The Faithful
A Devotional by Margot Cioccio




Psalm 31:23-24 (NIV1984)
 Love the LORD, all his saints! 
The LORD preserves the faithful,
   but the proud he pays back in full.
24 Be strong and take heart, 
all you who hope in the LORD.

We moved to Spokane for a better job with the company my husband had been working for and two months later they closed their doors. We had committed to renting a big 5 bedroom home and signed a 2 year lease. He looked for jobs for 2 years while also going to school to get his associates degree. During that time we did have unemployment money but the budget never worked out on paper.
Over and over again God supplied our need most often at the last moment. He preserves the faithful!

Un-employment ended and my husband still had not found a job and so we decided to move out of the big house. It was a horrible hard move. We had to get rid of about half of our stuff in garage sales because we knew we had to move to a smaller home. Then we did not find another place in time and had to move to storage and went to stay with my mom. Be strong and take heart, all you who hope in the LORD

While we were there my mom fell and the place she hit her arm became infected with a type of MERSA. She was in the hospital and they tried and tried to treat it with various medications. Soon as the medicine course would end it would flair up again. They finally after more than a month, had to do an operation to remove the tissue in that area. During that same time my aunt that lives above my mother also had to have surgery.  So it was clear that God had us there on purpose. They could not have managed with out our help. It was a 45 minutes drive from her house into Spokane.  With lessons and activities we are involved in we made that drive several times a week. We did finally find a small home to move into a year ago in July. It was more than I had hoped to have to pay but it over looks a beautiful wetland area. My husband did get a part time job working nights doing store resets - He has to travel to stores around the region. He is still doing that job a year later. 

I’d like to say I have easy answers for why some periods of our life are so difficult. I know that God has used it to cause me to press into Him.  I have seen God to be faithful and I have learned to need less. Gods goal is to shape us and mold us to fulfill his plans and purposes. To do that he often uses trials, hardship and pain - they are in hind site often blessings in disguise that prepare us for future things. Joseph spent 22 years as a slave and in prison.  Would God put someone through pain, disappointment, hardship to prepare them to later save a nation. We read those stories and we know the ending but during those years Joseph did not know how it would turn out.  If I have learned anything it is to trust God even when I don’t understand. Some things will only become clear in the light of future. One never knows when we will turn the corner and that future someday will be staring us in the face providing the answer to what we do not yet understand.  We can't however just stand around scratching our heads. We need to be taking the little steps of faith that present themselves day by day.  He makes the vision and the way more clear as we take each progressive step of faith.
Prayer:
Dear Lord, Thank you for your promise to preserve the faithful. Help me be strong and take heart. My hope is in you Lord. Right now I don’t understand all the whys. I pray you use this time in my life to mold and shape me to fulfill your purposes.

The Name of The LORD

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The Name of The LORD

1 Samuel 17:45 (NIV1984) 
David said to the Philistine, “You come against me with sword and spear and javelin,

but I come against you in the name of the LORD Almighty, 

the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. 

 I too often forget that there is a spiritual war going on - forgetting does not make it go away. It just leaves me and people I care about open to attack from the enemy.   Usually when I think of spiritual weapons I think of the ones listed in Ephesian 6. You know the helmet of salvation, the breast plate of righteousness, the shield of faith, the belt of truth, the gospel peace shoe and the sword of the Spirit. 
So, ok, I put those things on by faith but I'm not sure we really get it. This is not just some little prayer ritual ditty that we confess over ourselves. If I put on the helmet of salvation it speaks more to having comprehended that I was once hopelessly lost in sin, with no way on my own to get to God. There is nothing I can do to deserve the magnificent pardon that I have received through Jesus and his death and resurrection.  That helmet becomes securely on my head when I stop trying by my own efforts to sanctify or clean myself up. When I finally accept what Jesus has done on my behalf, I turn the corner into a life of gratitude.  The breast plate guards my heart not by my righteousness but by His. Coming to terms with this moves me to accept the condition of my heart and to allow the Lord into those hidden and secret places, to share it with Jesus honestly and openly. Its not like I can really hide any of it from Him any more than Adam and Eve could hide their nakedness with a fig leaf.

In our verse today however the weapon that David wields is The Name of the LORD. So did He stand there shouting Jehovah Jireh My Provider His Grace Is Sufficient, or was it I AM has it out for you Giant. I don't think that is what happened that day. It was in that moment that David declared to the giant and the listening armies "You come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the LORD Almighty."  It is not the rocks or the sling in his hand or by speaking the right words.  It is the confidence in knowing the LORD Almighty.

David had spent years as a shepherd alone with the sheep. Alone with the Lord, singing songs, talking out loud to the LORD, calling on the Lord to help him when the lions or bears made of with one of the flock. He had a deep and abiding relationship with the Lord that had come from having spent time with the Lord on a daily basis. Too often people come to their moment of crisis and begin sending up Hail Mary prayers for Gods deliverance. God is looking for us to walk with Him daily, to be learning the sound of His voice. To make time to come away and fellowship with Him amidst the never ending duties of daily life. Is He my priority, is He first in my heart?  It never hurts to go through your Bible and discover all the names by which the LORD is called there are deep riches to be found. It is not so much knowing the names He is called but knowing Him intimately and deeply. Those names are merely a point of introduction to that part of who He is.
When I have seen him deliver me in a financial pinch I know Him as my provider. When I have been consumed with guilt and shame I have come to know Him as the Lord who sanctifies and forgives. When I am confused and I look to Him I begin to know Him as my peace. In whatever we are facing there is a comfort in knowing that He is more than enough.  

You may be facing some trial today. The Lord wants to help you - He waits for you to get to the end of your self sufficiency and realize your need for Him. Not just in this moment of crisis but in every step of the journey forward. He waits to share the journey with you. 

Prayer:
Dear Lord, I want to know you more. Help me to make time to spend with you. Help me to not put on your armor with some whimsical ritual of a prayer. Help me instead to think deeply on the purpose and the provision of those pieces of armor. That they would so become a part of me as you fill me with understanding and insight into what you have done, and who you are. Help me to not only know your name but know you.

William Booth - Who Cares?

William Booth in about 1862

William Booth - Who Cares?
A Devotional by Margot Cioccio
 

“While women weep, as they do now, I'll fight;
while children go hungry, as they do now I'll fight; 
while men go to prison, in and out, in and out, as they do now, 
I'll fight; 
while there is a drunkard left, 
while there is a poor lost girl upon the streets, 
while there remains one dark soul without the light of God, 
I'll fight, 
I'll fight to the very end!”
~William Booth 


I try to remember that Christianity did not begin with my generation. There have been many who have gone before and left footsteps for me and others to follow. Their journeys of faith and the legacies they have left have been a great inspiration to me at various times in my life. One of these who I would share with you today, is William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army.

He starts his life out in a fairly well of family in England but due to some poor financial decisions the family ends up bankrupt. His father has to take William out of school at age 13 because they can no longer afford the tuition. He is apprenticed to a pawnbroker and his father's alcoholism soon leads to his untimely demise. Six years later his apprenticeship ends, during which he has studied and read and trained himself to be a lay preacher.  He goes on to find that he is much more passionate about street ministry and preaching than the asignments given through the Methodist Reformed Church. Probably as a result of his own first hand experience with poverty he has a deep heart for the poor and the destitute.

One article that he wrote profoundly impacted my life back in my early 20's and stays with me even to this day. It is an article called Who Cares? (Here's the link). It is a vision that he had one day while traveling and was pondering the condition of the people he saw.  I have never been able to shake the images created by that article. It is part of what moves me to reach out to the basket cases of the world. Even yesterday a friend, I know only from writing back and forth for a year commented. "YOU HAVE BEEN SO SUPPORTIVE...HOW DO YOU PUT UP WITH ME I AM SUCH A BASKET CASE!" I replied "I seem to specialize in basket cases. It seems to be part of how God wired me. I make sense to basket cases or maybe its just that I see people with eyes of faith and hope, most people only see the surface mess." I think it is partly how God has wired me but it is also images from Who Cares? by Willaim Booth have always stuck in my head. I remember that Jesus rescued me. He has picked me up when I have fallen, he has restored my heart and life time and time again. I want to be doing what He is doing. In the following quote from the article Who Cares? I captured His heart at an early age and I hope as you read this devotional and that article that your heart will also be moved to hear His call.
"And then I saw something more wonderful still. The miseries and agonies, and perils and
blasphemies, of these poor struggling people in this dark sea moved the pity of the great God in Heaven; moved it so much that He sent a Great Being to deliver them. And I thought that this Great Being whom Jehovah sent came straight from His palace, right through the black clouds, and leaped right into the raging sea among the drowning, sinking people; and there I saw Him toiling to rescue them, with tears and cries, until the sweat of His great anguish ran down in blood. And as He toiled and embraced the poor wretches, and tried to lift them on to the rock, He was continually crying to those already rescued - to those whom He had helped up with His own bleeding hands - to come and help Him in the painful and laborious task of saving their fellows."

I know with the work with the homeless and poor that I am involved in through my inner city church that it is hard to find help. We cry out for laborers from our fellow suburb churches to come and lend a hand. The response is very small for the most part. We get a big influx of help around Thanksgiving but the homeless and poor are here struggling all year long. Its as if people do their good dead for the year by giving a few old coats or a turkey and check their concern for others off their to do list for the year. I know we all have our own things that we feel called to give our time and energy to- but as I read my Bible and look to see what Jesus was doing - he was not cloistered away in the Temple. He was out on the streets meeting the needs of the sick, the demon possessed, the poor and the broken. I guess I am challenging you to look beyond your own circumstances - you will always find others who's situation is far worse than your own.

I will end with Psalm 41:1 Blessed is he who has regard for the weak; the Lord delivers him in times of trouble. Your own situation may be a mess today but there is something wonderful that happens when we lay down our own concerns and leave them in the hands of Jesus and go about his Kingdom work reaching out to others who are struggling. These words of William Booth's compel me to put aside my own concerns and make myself available to the Lord and His work.
He was continually crying to those already rescued - to those whom He had helped up with His own bleeding hands - to come and help Him

Prayer:
Dear Lord, 
Help me as I spend time with you to catch your vision and your heart. That when I hear you call I will be quick to respond - Lord send me!. You know my own concerns and struggles and I want to intrust them to your care and change my focus from myself to your Kingdom and the needs of others.
Lead me by your Holy Spirit, I make myself available to you.
 

The Blind Man

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~ Margot

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The Blind Man

A Devotional by Mark Kenney

 John 9 5-7
  While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”
 After saying this, he spit on the ground, 
made some mud with the saliva, and put it on the man’s eyes.  
“Go,” he told him, “wash in the Pool of Siloam” 
(this word means “Sent”). 
So the man went and washed, and came home seeing.

The blind man in scripture undoubtedly cried out to God for his sight several times in his life. When a strange man he had heard fables about came up and rubbed spit laced mud on his face I'm reasonably confident he wasn't thinking God had answered his prayer for healing in that moment.
How sad for him if he stayed critical and just wiped the mud off right there.

He had to get to the pool!

On the way to the pool, everyone he knew and many he didn't know all saw him with mud on his face and all saw that he was blind. They all saw he was helpless to even get to the pool on his own and needed others to assist him. His decision to obey was really a decision to get absolutely and completely out of any and everything comfortable or familiar and do a task that was very emotionally challenging to himself.

Some people reading this have been all caught up in the fact that they have mud on their face. They are caught up in the fact that God's most recent instruction will most likely embarrass them to others. The Lord would say to you... stop focusing on the mud and get to the pool!
The only thing the devil can do to keep you blind is to keep you focused on the mud. If instead you will ignore the mud and get to the pool, there you can wash the mud off and reveal your awaiting miracle!

Dear Lord, 
Help me get my focus right. Remind me of any instructions you have given me that I brushed aside because they seemed too embarrassing.  Help me be obedient to do the things you are calling me to do. Help me to not worry about the mud and help me get to the pool where your miracle answers are waiting for me.